40
“Rock solid,” is Bruce Willis’ nod-wink appraisal of an attack strategy in G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The film’s nowhere near as sturdy, trundling out middling action and nonsensical plotting.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
It's not enough to call this the rare franchise action movie to bring the goods; it's the even rarer one whose creators seem to understand what the goods even are.
38
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Everything in G.I. Joe: Retaliation is perfunctory - technically proficient but soulless. It's not exciting. It's boring.
50
Offering a more straight-faced brand of idiocy than its cheerfully dumb 2009 predecessor, G.I. Joe: Retaliation might well have been titled “G.I. Joe: Regurgitation,” advertising big guns, visual effects and that other line of Hasbro toys with the same joyless, chew-everything-up-and-spit-it-out efficiency.
40
Fast Five was a good example of how applying The Rock to a tired series could bring it back to life. G.I. Joe, by opting for self-seriousness instead of knowing daftness, has squandered its secret weapon.
67
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
It's well-executed technocratic action fluff. But it did leave me buzzed rather than drained.
50
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
It’s a live-action version of on an ’80s cartoon that was designed to sell toys. This is “Transformers” without the Bumblebee Camaro, a lot of action, a few one-liners, and a lot of gunplay.
67
The Playlist by Todd Gilchrist
Retaliation is no masterpiece, but it’s a movie whose fun doesn’t feel like a four-letter word -- popcorn entertainment that not only rivals what you see during summer, but surpasses what you see from Sommers.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
So fetishistic about high-powered weapons that it qualifies as an NRA wet dream, G.I. Joe: Retaliation pretty accurately reflects the franchise's comic book and cartoon origins, which is both a good and a bad thing: good if you're a 12- to 15-year-old boy, bad if you're just about anyone else.